The World of Cyberbullying

Nina Dobrev once said, “In the cyberworld, bullies have a wall to hide behind so they say things that they probably wouldn’t say otherwise. It’s because they are unhappy with something about themselves so they lash out in an anonymous way.” (Dobrev, par. 1) Cyberbullying is when someone uses technology to send hostile, threatening, or humiliating messages to or about another person. This can occur through text, email, or the most seen, social media. Cyberbullying can be anonymous, which makes the situation even worse. In the society that we are living in today, we are all wired our phones and laptops. Before the 2000s, one living in this era would never be able to imagine a life with smartphones. However, society has progressed and now, one cannot even use the bathroom without their phone. The Internet opened a world of opportunities, as well as new dangers, such as cyber bullying. Many people, ranging from all different ages become the victims of online harassment. Cyber bullying not only takes the dignity and worth of one and leads to depression but it may also end with suicide. The cases of cyberbullying have increased over the last years and this has to stop. In today's culture, we need to take active steps to stop the bully from targeting people, we need to help better the effects of cyberbullying, such as suicide and depression, and we need to not let social media impact us negatively.

Why should we keep facing a world where people are being bullied, when we could do something about it? Should cyberbullying be considered a criminal offense? If cyberbullying were to be a criminal offense, would it decrease? We are apart of the problem in which is causing others to lower their self esteem and commit suicide.. For example, if one were to post a picture on instagram, and others were to comment mean and cruel things, that person would not feel mentally and emotionally okay. So why not stop all this nonsense? There’s one word for that. And that word is money. Money plays a huge factor when trying to stop bullying especially when it comes to social media standards, because why lose all your money and shut down the app, meanwhile people are committing suicide, depressed, and bringing themselves down. We are the only ones who can stop this.

We are the ones who need to protest against this, and really speak about what is right and what is wrong. Put yourself in the shoes of others that are getting bullied. When they ask for help, do they really get help? Does it really make them want to stop them from taking those pills, or stop posting there pictures that they feel beautiful in? We need to take action in this and stop this fake world that we are living in and really take it into consideration that there are other people choosing to leave this world because of a comment someone made on social media. Cyber bullying should be a criminal offense. The reasons to this are because the people making these nasty comments to bring others down is causing the target to take their life. They are the one making the comment. They are the one who’s putting this target into a place of depression and sadness that no one should face. Everyone should know right from wrong so that when the offender gets confronted and claims that they “didn’t know,”this is false because they are the ones who triggered the victims emotions and played with their head.People need to learn that the consequences of cyberbullying are serious in this world.

Just as someone is getting bullied, the bully may also be going through something in their life and want to make others feel the same way that he/ she is feeling So, how do we stop the bully from targeting others? We need to speak up And help open their eyes and show them that what they are doing is wrong and really impacts the lives of others. In our society today, we never know what one is going through so this bully just needs a punching bag. And that punching bag is a person. Within this both the bully and the target get hurt. When we notice a bully we always have to think to ourselves, “What could this person be going through in their life?” According to verywellmind, the reasons why bullies have a need to target others are because targets are well liked or popular, targets are viewed stereotypically or prejudicially, and targets have physical features that attract attention.

Targets having physical features that attract attention promotes jealousy toward the wrongdoer.Jealousy plays a huge role in this because the bully just wants to make you feel like crap and in the end the bully wins. It’s not only whether you are pretty you attract attention, it's whether you are short, fat, tall, have a big chest or no chest at all, bullies will find a way to utilize your appearance and bring you down. Do we have to be pretty in order to attract attention? Any type of appearance will attract a bully whether you are pretty or not. In the end we need to realize that standing up for ourselves, and making ourselves the bigger and better person will help us defeat this obstacle.The bullies confidence will eventually decrease and they will understand that what they did was wrong and will not do it to anybody else.

We need to help better the effects of cyberbullying, but how can we do this? The effects that play a major role in cyberbullying are depression, anger, suicide, and low self- esteem. We need to really take into consideration that we are losing many people due to the effects of cyberbullying and this needs to stop. An article from BullyingUK tells us that “It has been well documented that cyberbullying has resulted in tragic events including suicide, and self-harm and clearly, more needs to be done in order to protect vulnerable children and adults from online bullying.” How can we help these people who are facing these horrible feelings and thoughts? Some examples Bullying UK tells us is “letting them know that there is help available to them, support them to talk to a teacher that they trust so they feel they have somewhere safe at school to go to, encourage them to talk to their parents or speak to another family member, take any type of screenshots of the cyber bullying so that there is proof of this is happening, and report all abuse to the relevant social media networks by clicking on the “report abuse” button.”

Some statistics that show this are: 5% reported self-harm, 3% reported an attempt of suicide as a direct result of cyber bullying, 28% of young people have reported incidents of cyberbullying on Twitter, 87% of today’s youth have witnessed cyberbullying, almost 34%of students acknowledge that they have experienced cyberbullying, and one out of every three kids feel they are more accepted on social media networks than in real life. These statistics prove to us that we are not trying hard enough to take care of these innocent lives being taken away and we need to stop this. And if we did care enough,then we would put an end to this.

One of the biggest role in cyberbullying is not letting social media impact us negatively. But how can we prevent this? How can we feel confident again when someone has already hurt us and called us mean, horrible names? Social media cyberbullying should be stopped because it is in the main eye of the public. In our society today, we have devices that can save everything that has been said, or can even be seen forever, no matter what you do it will never be “deleted.” A big majority of cyberbullying incidents are being screenshotted, saved, and sent out to many people.We have a big problem that interferes with social media - and that is communicating with one another. Why is communicating through a computer easier than communicating face to face? When you are on social media and online, people tend to have this confidence that appears out of nowhere but we don't know what is true or not because social media allows us to hid our true identity. When the creators of social media, such as instagram and snapchat were creating these apps, they had a purpose, and this purpose was to connect with others and gain stronger connections with everyone around the world no matter what part of the world one is in. But honestly, thinking about it, it does more harm than good.

An example is all these young people in the world are facing the world of fakeness, and negativeness. It’s bringing all these kids more negative damage than positive. Social media exposes young children to too many things that they may not understand. Why are we harming these children for no reason? Social media has this power of being a bully without any type of consequence. The people who do participate in cyberbullying want to bring others down and put them in a place no one would want to see them in. The best way to put a stop to cyberbullying is if these websites take responsibility themselves. We should have people on these social media sites that prevent all this nonsense from happening, there should be people watching out for all the other people who are being harmed. And if these sites actually “cared” about the people affected by this matter, they would try their best to stop this. Once we see these changes in our social media sites, the bully might stop from taking on these negative actions.. Even though social media creators can not get rid of all cyberbullying in the world, they can help to make a difference and help to spread positivity.

In conclusion, bullying is a very serious matter, whether we like it or not, and whether we are participating or not. We need to come to the realization that bullying can occur in anyone’s life, whether you are victim, a bully, or a bystander and we may or may not know of it. Cyberbullying is calling us to take active steps to stop the bully from targeting others, we need to help better the effects of cyberbullying, such as suicide and depression, and we need to not let social media impact us negatively. Cyber bullying is a growing concern among parents and adults that needs to be eliminated before it gets out of hand. We are the ones to stop this. We can’t just sit and wait for someone to magically appear and save everyone. If cyberbullying didn’t exist we would be saving the lives of innocent ones. Go to stopbullying.gov in need of getting help or want to help others who are getting bullied. Even though we can’t stop any bullies, we can try to help any victims who are in need of any help. We need to help them with any embarrassment and humiliation that they face. Our society can and will help those who do go through cyberbullying and suffer from it and all we can do is protect them from the media and be there for them.

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